Stay COVID Meeting Safe

I've had a number of people asking me recently about using recently popularised Apps due to COVID-19 in personal situations. In my personal opinion, I would steer away from both Zoom and Houseparty in particular, use something that is tried and tested like Messenger, Hangouts, Facetime or WhatsApp and ensure they're up to date as the latter two have also had hacking issues in the past due to people not updating after identified security breaches.

Both Apps are very popular at the moment and have had security and privacy concerns raised.

Houseparty

has been reviewed by security experts which have said: "it's probably safe".
It has safe security options but it is up to the end-user to implement them correctly.
Having said that if you read the fine print Houseparty uses your personal data and advertising as their income (nothing is free), there have been reports of users having their login details for Netflix and Spotify accounts compromised but these are currently unfounded accusations.

If you have installed the app 

I would recommend resetting any password where you're using the same email address and check Have I Been Pwned.

Zoom 

is rather popular at the moment and has had a history of security issues, here are a range of concerns since mid last year:

• APR 2020 - Infosec researchers at loggerheads as new Zoom zero-day goes public
• APR 2020 - Zoom sued for allegedly sharing users' personal data with Facebook
• APR 2020 - Zoom was secretly mining LinkedIn data
• APR 2020 - Zoom admits to routing some US calls through China
• MAR 2020 - Zoom isn’t actually end-to-end encrypted  
• MAR 2020 - Zoom, one of the most anticipated tech IPOs of the year, has one key profit driver: engineers in China
• July 2019 - Serious Zoom security flaw could let websites hijack Mac cameras
• + more...

NB: Zoom has issued an official apology and have outlined what they plan to do over the next 90 days to bring their platform up to speed in what they believe they need to do to alleviate concerns.
Stay Safe!